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Episode 1402: Justin Time
Date July 10, 2019 Summary Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about the Home Run Derby and the All-Star Game, Justin Verlander’s and Rob Manfred’s comments about the juiced ball, the recent rapid turnover among elite hitters, and an instance of premature celebration featuring Fernando Rodney, then answer listener emails about Verlander’s on-pace-to-be-historic strand rate, whether we should have recognized that Verlander’s decline in Detroit wasn’t permanent, whether we should redefine “scoring position,” whether it’s harder to make the majors or to stay there, and what would happen if strikeouts triggered ejections, plus a Stat Blast about a showdown (Sho-down?) between Shohei Ohtani the hitter and Shohei Ohtani the pitcher. Topics * Justin Verlander's high strand rate * Pitchers who conserve energy during a start * Reasons for Justin Verlander's bounce back and how it could have been predicted * Ohtani vs. Ohtani hypothetical * Redefining scoring position in a high home-run era * Is it harder to make the majors or stay there? * If strikeouts resulted in an ejection Intro Paul McCartney and Wings, "Arrow Through Me" Outro Jonathan Coulton, "Sticking it to Myself" Banter * Ben and Sam review the Home Run Derby and the impact of the $1 million prize for the winner. They also revisit some of Sam's derby ideas from Episode 1401. * Home Run Derby spray charts * Justin Verlander's comments about changes to the ball and MLB's role in it. Sam maintains that MLB should make changes to the ball but be very open about doing so. * High turnover among MLB's top hitters * Episode 1401 follow-up: Fernando Rodney's premature celebration in 2014 followed by a blown save * Sam was surprised at how NBA insiders view the status of their league since he sees it as in a much better place than MLB (and other professional sports). Email Questions * Darren: "I was just searching FanGraphs and decided to look at some single season records since 1920. I went to pitching and then LOB % and noticed that Justin Verlander, right now, has the highest single season LOB% at 90.7%. He would beat 1977 John Candelaria's 88.8% back in 1977. Basically, is this a cool record that Justin Verlander is currently breaking?" * Jake: "As a lifelong Tigers fan, the disbanding and decline of their early 2010's Powerhouse was painful. Their rotation was a ridiculous list of current and future Cy Young winners whose break up hurts to look back on, wondering what could have been. But the perceived gradual decay of Justin Verlander in 2013, 2014, and then the injury ridden 2015 season was especially upsetting. Looking back at that time I assumed Verlander had "lost his stuff” and was pleasantly surprised when he bounced back to full form after 2016 and was dealt away from the rebuilding Tigers' to help Houston win the World Series. In retrospect, are there any advanced statistical predictors that could have shown Verlander was just having injury related down years rather than "losing his stuff?" Or are there predictors that show Verlander really hadn't lost his stuff at all, and we Tigers fans were overreacting to and uptick in losses? Can these predictors be validated in analyzing pitchers we perceive as losing their stuff like Felix Hernandez, Matt Harvey, Jordan Zimmerman, etc.?" * Eric: "Imagine you could set up an OOTP-style baseball simulator and have Ohtani face Ohtani a season's worth of times--700 PA or so. What would Ohtani's batting line be? What would Ohtani's ERA, K%, BB% etc. be?? I expect both the hitter and pitcher would have worse numbers than we're accustomed to for Ohtani, since he's facing someone really good in this sim." * Russ: "In the 5th inning of today's game between the Nationals and the Royals, the Nats' number 8 hitter hit a ground ball to second, recording the second out and advancing the runner from first to second. Next to hit was Nats' pitcher Patrick Corbin, who has a .088 batting average for the season. As Corbin took the plate, the Nats' commentator casually referred to the runner on second as being "in scoring position." This got me thinking. With the pitcher at the plate and two outs, the runner Brian Dozier was almost certainly not in a position to score. In fact, his odds of scoring would have to be considerably higher if he were at first base with a home run hitter like Anthony Rendon or Juan Soto at bat. A little googling led me to the baseball prospectus stat called the "Guillen number," the percentage of a team's runs that score through home runs. Sorting all team seasons by Guillen number, it seems that there are 11 teams all-time that have scored more than 50% of their runs via home run. 6 of those are 2019 teams - Milwaukee, Toronto, San Diego, Seattle, Houston and Minnesota. All the other teams in the top 20 are from 2010 or later. Even expecting these numbers might regress a bit, there appears to be a clear trend towards runs scoring independently of what base a runner occupies. Is the concept of being "in scoring position" losing relevance as it becomes more important simply to get runners on base?" * Paul: "I was watching MLB.tv the other day just flipping through games and I heard a commentator make an interesting remark. I honestly don’t remember the game or even really the context of this quote but it must've been in regards to a recently called up prospect. He said "it's hard to make it to the majors, it's even harder to stay there." Is that really the case? I think depending on who you are talking about it is extremely difficult to even make 1 appearance in a major league baseball game. I know zero people personally who've ever played major league baseball. Seems pretty hard to me to just get there." * John: "My 5 year old son is walking around the house singing "Take me out to the ballgame" with the wrong words: "one, two, three strikes your out *of* the old ball game..." This now has me thinking, how different would baseball be if the penalty for striking out was immediate ejection? First thought is that we'd see everybody turn into slap-hitting contact guys to avoid being ejected. So there would be fewer home runs, except for late in games when your team is trailing and you can risk an ejection for the shot at a home run. How would the pitchers respond? How would you go for strikeouts against batters who are up there with the guillotine is over their necks? GM's would have to adapt their roster construction as well, because you never know when several of your hitters will be ejected in the first few innings. Can we get an independent league to experiment with this rule?" Stat Blast * Sam's Stat Blast uses Log5 to answer Eric's question about an Ohtani vs. Ohtani team. * Over 600 plate appearances Ohtani the hitter would slash .252/.330/.533 with 41 home runs and 191 strikeouts. * Sam uses this method to review other hypothetical batter/pitcher matchups. Notes * Sam expresses his great appreciation for the Stat Blast theme song, which was written by Jessie Barbour (Ben's wife). * Sam suggests that there should be a term for when a the number of bases a runner needs to advance to score is less than the number of outs left in the inning. * Ben and Sam both agree that it is harder to stay in the majors than make the majors. Links * Effectively Wild Episode 1402: Justin Time * Baseball Savant Home Run Derby Tracker * Homers May Drive Even Great Pitchers Mad by Zach Crizer * Justin Verlander wants to fix the baseballs by Jayson Stark * The Era of Breakout Batters by Ben Lindbergh * Rodney blows lead in ninth after celebrating in eighth by Bob Dutton * Fernando Rodney's premature celebration * Stat Blast theme song * A Short Digression into Log5 by Dan Fox * Bonds vs. Pedro, and More Fund with Batter-Pitcher Matchups by Sam Miller * A Baseball's Exit Velocity Is Five Parts Hitter, One Part Pitcher by Rob Arthur * Who Controls How Hard the Ball is Hit? by Mike Fast Category:Episodes Category:Email Episodes